But the common man in Britain was not being the British bulldog of General Gerson’s hopes. He was declining to be a bulldog altogether. He was remaining a profoundly skeptical1 human being, with the most disconcerting modern tendencies. And much too large a part of his combative2 energy was directed, not against the appointed enemy, but against the one commanding spirit which could still lead him to victory.
The Decree of Public Safety was now the law of the land. It might not be strictly3 constitutional, but the dictatorship had superseded4 constitutionalism. Yet everywhere it was being disputed. The national apathy5 was giving place to a resistance as bold as it was dogged. North, east, and west there were protests, remonstrances6, overt7 obstruction8. The recalcitrant9 workers found lawyers to denounce the Lord Paramount10’s authority, funds to organize resistance. Half the magistrates11 in the country were recusant and had to be superseded by military courts. Never had the breach12 between the popular mind and the imperial will of the directive and possessing classes been so open and so uncompromising. It was astounding13 to find how superficial loyalty14 to the Empire had always been.
The distress15 of the Lord Paramount at these tensions was extreme. “My English,” he said. “My English. My English have been misled.” He would stand with a sheaf of reports from the mobilization department in his hand repeating, “I did not count on this.”
It needed all the most penetrating16 reminders17 of which Gerson was capable to subdue18 that heroically tender heart to the stern work of repression19. And yet, just because the Lord Paramount had stood aside and effaced20 himself in that matter of the hospitals he was misjudged, and his repressive measures were understood to be the natural expression of a fierce and arrogant21 disposition22. The caricaturists gave him glaring and projecting eyes and a terrible row of teeth. They made his hands — and really they were quite shapely hands — into the likeness23 of gesticulating claws. That was a particularly cruel attack. “I must be strong,” he repeated to himself, “and later they will understand.”
But it is hard for a patriot24 to be stark25 and strong with his own misguided people. Riots had to be dispersed26 with bayonets and rifle-fire in the south of Wales, in Lancashire and the Midlands. There was savage27 street fighting in Glasgow. The tale of these domestic casualties lengthened28. The killed were presently to be counted by the hundred. “Nip the trouble in the bud,” said Gerson. “Arrest the agitators29 and shoot a few of them, if you don’t like firing on crowds. Over half the country now time is being lost and the drafts delayed.”
So those grim sedition30 clauses which had looked so calmly heroic on paper were put into operation. The military authorities arrested vigorously. A few old hands were caught in the net but even before the court-martials were held it was apparent to the Lord Paramount that for the most part they were dealing31 with excitable youths and youngish men. Most of these younger agitators would have been treated very indulgently indeed if they had been university students. But Gerson insisted upon the need of a mental shock for the whole country. “Shoot now,” he said, “and you may forgive later. War is war.”
“Shoot now,” said Gerson, “and the rest will come in for training, good as gold. Stop the rot. And let ’em say what they like about you.”
The Lord Paramount could feel how tenderly and completely that faithful secretary of his could read the intimations of his saddened and yet resolute32 profile. “Yes,” he admitted, “we must shoot — though the bullet tears us on its way.”
There was a storm of remonstrances, threats, and passionate34 pleas for pity. That was to have been expected. Much was fended35 off from direct impact upon the Lord Paramount, but he knew the protest was there. It found an echo in his own too human heart. “The will of a great people,” he said, “must override36 these little individual stories. There is this boy Carrol from Bristol they are asking me to reprieve37! There seems to be a special fuss about him. A sort of boy scholar of promise — yes. But read the poison of those speeches he made! He struck an officer. . . .”
“Shall Carrol die?” asked an outbreak of placards along Whitehall that no one could account for. That hardened the Lord Protector’s mouth; he must show he would not be bullied38, and in stern response to that untimely challenge young Carrol and five and thirty associates died at dawn.
There was a hideous39 popular clamour at this unavoidable act of war. The Lord Paramount’s secretarial organization was far too new and scanty40 to protect him adequately from the clamour of this indignation and, it may be, something in himself acted as an all too ready receiver for these messages of antagonism41. Abruptly43 out of the void into which he was wont44 to vanish appeared Sir Bussy the unquenchable. He was now almost full size again and confident and abrupt42 in his prewar style.
“This shooting of boys!” he said. “This killing45 of honest and straightforward46 people who don’t agree with you! Why, damn it! we might be in Italy! It’s a century out of date. Why did you ever let this war get loose?”
The Lord Paramount stood defensively mute, and it was Gerson who took the word out of his mouth and answered Sir Bussy. “Have you never even heard of discipline? Have you never heard of the needs of war? I tell you we are at war.”
“But why are we at war?” cried Sir Bussy. “Why the devil are we at war?”
“What the devil are fleets and armies for if we are never to use them? What other ways are there for settling national differences? What’s a flag for if you’re never going to wave it? I tell you, it’s not only street-corner boys and Bolshie agitators who are going against the wall. This Empire of ours is fighting for its life. It calls on every man. And you know as well as I know, Sir Bussy, what it needs to win. . . . And at what a pace the stuff is coming in!” . . .
Gerson had turned to the Lord Paramount, and Sir Bussy, it seemed, was no longer present.
“Peace time you may be as soft as you like — delay and humbug47 have always been the rule for home politics, naturally — but you can’t play about with war and foreign policy. For things of that order you need a heart of steel.”
“A heart of steel,” echoed the Lord Paramount.
“Gas L and a heart of steel.”
“We go through with it, mon général,” said the Lord Paramount. “Trust me.”
“Time we started going through with it. . . .”
What was far more distressing48 to the Lord Paramount than any other resistances or remonstrances over this business of internal discipline was the emergence49 from nothingness of a certain old lady, old Mrs. Carrol. Against addresses, protests, demonstrations50, threats of murder, and the like, the Lord Paramount could be the strongest of strong men, could show a face of steely disregard. But old Mrs. Carrol was different. Her attack was different in its nature. She did not threaten, she did not abuse. Carrol, it seemed, had been an only son. She wanted him alive again.
She came like a sudden thought into his presence. She was exactly like an old woman lodge-keeper at Samphore Park, near Mr. Parham’s early home. That old woman, whose name was long since forgotten, had had an only son also, three or four years older than the juvenile51 Parham, and he had worked in the garden of Mr. Parham’s father. Always he had been known as Freddy. He had been a very friendly, likable boy, and the two youngsters had been great friends and allies. He read books and told stories, and once he had confided52 a dreadful secret to his companion. He was half minded to be a socialist53, he was, and he didn’t believe not mor’n half the Bible was true. They had had an argument, a quarrel, for it was young Parham’s first meeting with sedition, and duty and discipline were in his blood. But of course it was impossible there could be any identity between this long-forgotten rustic54 and young Carrol. By now he would be old enough to be young Carrol’s father.
It was a little difficult to trace how this old lady got at the Lord Paramount. She seemed to have great penetrating power. His staff ought perhaps to have fended her off. But the same slight distrust of those about him, that sense of the risk of “envelopment,” which made the Lord Paramount desire to be as “accessible” as possible to the generality, left just the sort of opening through which a persistent55 old woman of that kind might come. At any rate, there she was, obliterating56 all the rest of the case, very shabby and with a careworn57 face and a habit of twisting one hand round inside the other as she spoke58, extraordinarily59 reminiscent of Freddy’s mother.
“When people go to war and get boys shot and the like, they don’t think a bit what it means to them they belongs to, their mothers and such, what have given their best years to their upbringing.
“He was a good boy,” she insisted, “and you had him shot. He was a good SKILFUL60 boy.”
She produced a handful of paper scraps61 from nowhere and held them out, quivering, to the Lord Paramount. “Here’s some of the little things he drew before he went into the works. Why, I’ve seen things by royalties62 not half so good as these! He didn’t ought to have been shot, clever as he was. Isn’t there anything to be done about it?
“And when he got older he had a meccano set, and he made a railway signal with lights that went on and off, and the model of a windmill that went round when you blew it. No wonder he was welcome in the works. I’d have brought them here for you to see if I’d thought they would have weighed with you. You’d have marvelled63. And now he won’t never make anything more with his hands, and those busy little brains of his are still as stone.”
There is no record that Alexander or C?sar or Napoleon was haunted by an old woman who kept on twisting her hands about as though she were trying to wring64 the blood out of a deed that was done, and who sought to temper her deadly persistence65 by a pose of imploration. Almost she cringed.
“You don’t understand, my good woman,” said the Lord Paramount, “He put his brains to a bad use. He was a mutineer. He was a rebel.”
The old lady would have none of that. “Artie wasn’t ever a rebel. Don’t I know it? Why, when he was little I was frightened at his goodness, always so willing, he was and so helpful. I’ve thought time after time, for all his health and spirits, ‘That boy must be ailing,’ so good he was to me. . . .
“And now you’ve shot him. Can’t anything else be done about it still? Can’t something be done instead?”
“This crucifies me,” he said to Mrs. Pinchot. “This crucifies me.”
That made him feel a little better for a time, but not altogether better. “All things,” he said, “I must suffer in my task,” and still was not completely convinced. He descended66 from his cross. He tried to be angry. “Damn old Mrs, Carrol! Can no one make that old woman understand that War is War? This is no place for her. She must be stopped from coming here.”
But she continued to come, nevertheless; though her coming had less and less the quality of a concrete presence and more and more of the vague indefinable besetting67 distressfulness of a deteriorating68 dream.
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skeptical
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| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
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combative
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| adj.好战的；好斗的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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superseded
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| [医]被代替的，废弃的 | |
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apathy
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| n.漠不关心，无动于衷；冷淡 | |
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remonstrances
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| n.抱怨，抗议( remonstrance的名词复数 ) | |
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overt
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| adj.公开的，明显的，公然的 | |
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obstruction
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| n.阻塞，堵塞；障碍物 | |
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recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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magistrates
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| 地方法官，治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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reminders
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| n.令人回忆起…的东西( reminder的名词复数 )；提醒…的东西；（告知该做某事的）通知单；提示信 | |
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subdue
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| vt.制服，使顺从，征服；抑制，克制 | |
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repression
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| n.镇压，抑制，抑压 | |
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effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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lengthened
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| （时间或空间）延长，伸长( lengthen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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agitators
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| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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sedition
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| n.煽动叛乱 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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fended
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| v.独立生活，照料自己( fend的过去式和过去分词 )；挡开，避开 | |
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override
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| vt.不顾，不理睬，否决；压倒，优先于 | |
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reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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bullied
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| adj.被欺负了v.恐吓，威逼( bully的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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emergence
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| n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体 | |
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demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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juvenile
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| n.青少年，少年读物；adj.青少年的，幼稚的 | |
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confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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obliterating
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| v.除去( obliterate的现在分词 )；涂去；擦掉；彻底破坏或毁灭 | |
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careworn
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| adj.疲倦的，饱经忧患的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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royalties
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| 特许权使用费 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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persistence
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| n.坚持，持续，存留 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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besetting
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| adj.不断攻击的v.困扰( beset的现在分词 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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deteriorating
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的现在分词 ) | |
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